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User blog:Godofcyanide/TFL Domination: Addendum - The Truth About Deck Power
Read Part I and Part II . Hey folks, god of cyanide here again. Three things of note: 1) I finished in 10th place(!!!) in the wildest event ever, Nemesis Rising. Nemmy is a HOUSE. I would like to ironically thank Phungu81 for resting at the end of the event, which allowed me to ninja into 10th in the last half hour, and also thanks to my awesome allies for the stream of great seeds that enabled said ninja maneuver. 2) I'm currently rocking hard in RtR (in top 20 or so as I type this). After this event, I will be varying between first and second tier (but I plan on acquiring some raid cards and at least be able to continue to aid my allies) for a few weeks for three reasons. One, for at least the next four weeks, I have to devote more time to my job. I may also be testing some new top-tiering strategies during this time. Also, I'd like to finish writing this series. ;) Oh, and my CC will appreciate the cool-off, too. :D 3) I think I have cracked the deck construction equation, and it turned out to be relatively simple; I've also come to conclusions about why Recommend does what it does. I will explain it to you as I learned it earlier today. Much credit goes to Masarujasu, Mna78 and Fatihalptekin for their contributions to the cracking cause; their contributions and my collaborations with them caused me to keep pushing. The answer turned out to be surprisingly simple. Earlier this afternoon, while in chat here, one of our team ripped a raid card from gold medals. I typed, "If Mobage really knew what they were doing, they'd drop a 7x in my medals and watch me dive for more tiers on the Space Bridge." (I stopped at Tier 3 on Loop 2 and bought the Tantrum pack for 2 5x and 2 3x MTMs after reaching 500k points.) Guess who rips an alt Rampage shortly after? This guy! (I really should do this with the lottery LOL.) I immediately dive into the 4th tier of loop 2 of Space Bridge Hell (I have a good chance at something now - if I rip any bot, I get an MTM) and get... Headstrong bot. Meh, but, take it, right? I stopped there to assess my position. I had heard from other players that a half of a 7x raid was worth running if you could run MTMed 3x's. I never fully bought in on that as it seems like it would be too squishy to deal more damage than other guys. Well, let me watch some combats, then toss it in and watch more combats, watching for survivability v. damage dealing. I made a few interesting discoveries, bearing in mind all testing I did was against Level 8 bosses and some higher-level Jazz. Also of note is I didn't change my leader line (Nemesis, Tantrum/Tantrum weapon, Tantrum/Long Haul weapon); all of these ins and outs are happening on the soldier line. - Each of your team members has a specific number of hits he takes before he dies. Yes, specific. Watch combats, counting how the boss hits and who dies when and you will see it. MTM Headstrong die in 3 hits... And so does the Rampage alt! Meanwhile, for my non-raid cards, Ep Starscream dies in 4 turns, Dr. Arkeville in 5 and new Cyclonus in 6. I did a rough estimation and figured out that, for this event, dividing your cards' Health as seen on Team Edit by 40,000 and rounding up should give you the correct number of hits the card can take, bearing in mind this is rough and I'm purposefully ignoring Defense for simplification. (This means you should confirm the numbers with your own observations!) - The damage dealt to bosses by your cards is also reasonably predictable - the range seems to be relatively small in the variance of individual hits. As it turns out, the damage dealt by the Rampage alt with his weapon is also about equal to Headstrong MTM with either Shockwave 2 or Venom's weapon. So, indeed, a 7x half IS about equal to an MTMed 3x with correct weapon selection. Of further note is the futility of Episode cards v. current raid cards. Continuing my example above, the MTMed Headstrongs and Rampage alt each drop ~450k in damage per attack, while Starscream deals ~180k and the good Doctor deals ~210k. Headstrong lives around 3-4 turns; thus, he deals ~1.35-1.8M per combat compared to Starscream, who deals ~720k-1.08M in his 4-6 turns. Once you factor in an average of one critical per combat, Headstrong deals ~2.25-2.7M per combat while SS gets in ~1.08-1.44M. I think the choice is clear who belongs on the team and who sits on the bench. The choice between Cyclonus and Doctor A sitting came down to Cyclonus living long enough to potentially get two extra turns and Doctor A's damage not being high enough to overcome that. (EDIT: True story, I didn't write the numbers down, and, apparently I got the damage numbers wrong for Rampage. He actually does ~800K damage per hit! I figured this out after I pulled a SECOND Rampage alt via medals.) - The last bit involves positioning your cards optimally. Be aware of your highest health guys and avoid putting them all in one group. Ideally, the three cards that can take the most hits should be in separate trios. Since the boss hits a trio at once, keeping at least one member of a trio alive longer gives the boss more targets to hit and increases the survivability of your cards. Ideally, this would be your three hardest hitters, but sometimes you just have to do what makes damage sense. So, what's Recommend's problem, anyway? I think what it tries to do is select the cards that will survive the longest on their own, and then equip each card with the weapon that maximizes their Attack the most. This is why you can't trust Recommend - it tried to keep my Headstrong MTMs out of my lineup despite their addition increasing my DP and all of my damage/cube numbers because it dies one hit sooner than my other guys. Replacing Doctor A and Starscream with the Rampage alt and Headstrong (ironically, with Starscream 2 weapon!) added 1k to my DP (now 19957) AND increased my damage numbers by ~5M points of damage dealt. Recommend: So easy, it shouldn't be trusted. Category:Blog posts